


Vanya Hargreeves, Assassin Extraordinaire

by Rxel



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assassins & Hitmen, BAMF Vanya Hargreeves, Dark, Drugs, F/M, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Unreliable Narrator, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:02:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25934848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rxel/pseuds/Rxel
Summary: Reginald Hargreeves broke Number Seven.He did it in a systematic and pragmatic way, aimed at her weakness. Her family. All he had to do, really, was whisper a few words, and she tumbled right into the path that he set for her without another word. He made her his little assassin, and she really had no problems with it as long as he mentioned that it was for the good of her siblings.Seven never knew what it was like. The death, the violence. She was wholly unsuited for it in every shape or form. Yet, over time, she grew numb to it all. Whether that was the drugs talking, on the other hand, she never really knew.Five grew steadily worried as the years slipped by. He always waited for Seven to open up to him - at this point, he would really have accepted her opening up to anyone. There was clearly something wrong, but they were all stone-walled each time they thought they were getting somewhere.Just what was happening to Seven?
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves & Everyone
Comments: 15
Kudos: 164





	Vanya Hargreeves, Assassin Extraordinaire

The first time Seven killed a man, she was, ironically, seven years old.

Now, she knows that that had hardly been her first kill. The whispered voice of her father echoed incessantly in her mind, just like those records that he played every day during their breakfast.

She remembered how her hands shook, how her vision seemed to focus on a single point. It was the single most terrifying moment of her life by far, and she knew with startling clarity that the feeling would never fade from her.

She didn’t know how her siblings did it – she didn’t know if they had faced the same doubts and shakiness that she had. She didn’t know how they could _continue_ to kill. To stop crime? Because Dad said so?

How could they?

She didn’t understand… until later.

“Number Seven!” she heard behind her, but her mind would not respond. Her feet were rooted at the spot, and her eyes looked at the broken body before her.

Her breaths started to come in pants, and her vision trembled alarmingly.

There was a clatter, as the wooden object fell to the ground, its splintered ends stained dark red with blood. Blood that had come from the victim before her.

“Number Seven!”

The blood was sticky on her hands, and she could feel how it had crept across her face.

It seemed as if the sky had abruptly darkened before her, and soft rain came pattering down. The blood on her hands and face were washed away by the sudden downpour of rain, but the feeling of the blood on her hands? Not so much.

By this time, the world seemed entirely too loud. It was as if her heartbeat was trying to drown her in something – anything – before she lost her mind.

But of course, before anything could happen, she felt a slight prick at the back of her neck, and the next thing she knew was darkness.

Reginald Hargreeves looked down at the still body of Number Seven, his eyes shadowed. He adjusted his hat. The look in his eyes was unfathomable, but it was undeniable that something had abruptly changed within the course of a few minutes.

-

The next time Seven woke up, she was in bed. For a few, blissful moments, she didn’t remember anything.

Then, it hit, and she lurched out of bed, looking at her palms.

They were clean.

Too clean.

Even when she looked under her nails, it was devoid of any sign of the blood that had been spilled on her hands.

But she knew.

She knew without a single doubt that it had all happened yesterday.

She had killed in cold blood.

She killed without feeling, without remorse, for a single reason.

Because Dad said that that man… was going to kill her siblings.

The hands that had been shivering before suddenly calmed a little, and the tremors that rocked her calmed a little.

The silence that had previously enveloped her faded a little, and the faint sounds flooded back in. Strangely, they seemed a little clearer than they had yesterday. She wondered why.

She resisted the urge to put her head in her hands and instead stared blankly at the wall.

She had killed a man yesterday. She didn’t know him at all. He could have a family. He was probably a son. A father? A brother?

She didn’t know, and she had ripped all of it from him. Because she cared _more_ about her siblings than she did about him.

Seven didn’t know if that made it alright, but what she did know that was she was… not calm, per se, but perhaps accepting of it.

And that made her feel sick.

She felt like any semblance of innocence that she had previously was stripped away from her very soul, and she felt… old and weary.

How could her siblings do this on an almost daily basis?

Knock, knock, knock!

The knocks on her door were perfectly measured, and she knew it was Mom.

But Seven couldn’t bring herself to open the door. Instead, Mom came in like she always did whenever Seven was silent.

“Seven?” Mom asked. Her voice had inflection in all the right places, but sometimes… Seven could hear the… whirring that she had inside. “Your father wants to talk to you in his office.”

Seven didn’t reply, which caused Mom to walk forward to her.

“What’s wrong, Seven?” she asked, her voice full of concern.

Seven breathed shakily, still feeling fragile.

When Mom held her hand out to her, she took it.

She was still in her pyjamas, but it didn’t seem like Mom cared. It was strange, and it should have set off alarm bells within her, but for all that Seven thought about how much the world had changed and how she’d had a sudden awakening, it remained that she was still seven years old.

Before long, she’d been ushered in by Mom and stood before Dad in his office. She’d never been in here before – at least, not that she could remember.

Usually, Number Seven would have been sneaking looks around in curiosity, but she somehow didn’t feel so curious today.

Number Seven waited a while before Dad finally stopped writing, looking at her with his cold eyes.

“Number Seven,” he said in that baritone of his. His voice was, as usual, meticulous. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that he was just like Mom.

“Dad.”

Reginald stared at Number Seven with an unreadable face. She didn’t even flinch, which was rather unusual.

Yet, it seemed to make him pleased.

She couldn’t say how she knew – just that she did. Perhaps it was the lighter colour in his eyes that gave him away, or perhaps… her brows furrowed a little.

Dad rapped his knuckles on the desk, causing her to flinch at how loud the sound was.

Even stranger, the faint pleasure in his eyes grew a little thicker.

She didn’t know why.

But this was good. Being here, under his watchful eye, she felt a little more at peace. A part of her wanted to laugh, because he was usually the one who made her feel the loneliest, so the fact that he was actually her source of comfort right now was… almost amusing.

“It has come to my attention that you can be useful.”

His words should have stung, but all she felt was numb.

“I have adjusted your training plan, and you are to follow it.”

Dad pushed forward the piece of paper that he had previously been writing on, but she couldn’t drudge up the curiosity for it.

Number Seven took it numbly, looking over it.

There were many more things that were on it than there had been before. It could almost be called staggering, even more so than the training plan the rest of her siblings had.

She wanted to feel something, but all she could feel was the numbness inside her chest.

There was a part of her that was vaguely alarmed, but she ignored it.

“Yes, Dad.”

Her obedience must have pleased him because he gave her a nod.

She shut the door behind her on her way out, noticing the rest of her siblings walk past.

She smiled faintly at them, and some of them smiled back hesitantly. She truly could not feel anything. She was just… numb.

But there were still faint feelings coming through despite how numb she felt. Number Seven wondered if that was a contradiction. Being numb yet being able to faintly and vaguely access the love she had for her family.

“Seven, what’s wrong with you?” came a voice from behind her.

Seven turned around. Five was there. He was looking at her with veiled concern, and she smiled at him.

However, it seemed as if her smile was remiss because he just looked more concerned than before.

“Hello, Five,” she said faintly.

Before either of them could say anything else, the siren that blared signalling a mission went off.

There was a frown on Five’s face, which he quickly smoothened away.

“Talk to you later,” he said, jumping back to his room.

Seven continued to look at the spot that he’d disappeared a moment before continuing with her normal routine.

-

The next day.

Dad took her down to a room that was vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn’t place it.

She was better than yesterday. They had adjusted her dosage of anxiety pills, and she could feel more than the emptiness yesterday. She felt a sense of relief – but that relief was mixed with reluctance.

Yesterday, she had been number to the fact that she’d ended a man’s life in cold blood. Today, if she didn’t pay attention, she shook.

Dad caught her because his eyes looked disapproving.

“Number Seven, focus. If you wish for your siblings to continue being safe, you will listen to me.”

She instantly snapped to attention. What did he mean?

She could be of use to her siblings? How? Could it be that she had powers as well?

He must have read something from her eyes because he spoke as if he could read her mind. “Yes, Number Seven, you have powers.”

“What? How could I – I’ve always been–”

“Ordinary. Yes, I know. Well, you are not. You have exhibited powers since you were young. But you were too easily excitable, so I had to take measures for the greater good.”

Number Seven waited for the sting of betrayal, or an upset, but there were only faint feelings, as if she were feeling them from behind a glass wall. She was… confused.

Number Seven knew herself. She shouldn’t be reacting so nonchalantly about this.

Then, Dad started instructing her, and it was like a haze fell over her. She went through the motions, even as she was panting, her lungs about to burst.

Yet, she couldn’t seem to dredge up any form of negative feelings, nor was she about to say anything about it.

She felt like she could just continue like this, in a haze, and everything would be fine.

-

A month later.

Rather than their usual schedule with consisted of Number Seven running drills and obstacles, along with working on the violin to control her powers, she was brought to a room that she had never seen before.

There was a single man strapped to a metal chair in the middle of the room. There was a bruise on his temple, and he was slumped forward, as if all the fight had drained out of him.

“What are we doing today, Dad?” Number Seven asked. There was a faint note of worry in her voice, but she hadn’t noticed it.

“Today, you will be interrogating a man for information,” he said. “I have reason to believe that this man has information that we need.”

Seven suddenly paled.

Dad’s words brought her out of the emotional haze that she’d been sinking deeper and deeper into recently.

He wanted her to… interrogate a man?

There was a faint stab of sickness in her stomach, which lingered, as if she had a bad stomach ache.

“Well?” Dad barked at her, causing her to flinch.

She stood there, frozen on the spot. Her legs felt like lead.

“Do you want your siblings to die?” Dad said in a low voice, his eyes dangerous. Number Seven hid the shiver that wanted to break out of her skin.

She still hesitated, and Dad stepped forward, his cold eyes boring into her brown ones.

“Because of you, they will go in without any information, possibly leading to their deaths.”

Number Seven started to tremble. That… couldn’t be true, could it?

Dad wouldn’t send her siblings in without any information. What if they got hurt? What if… they died?

“No!” Number Seven said, having an emotional outburst.

“If you don’t want that, then you better start.”

Number Seven stepped forward, her hands clammy and sweaty. She looked at the table full of shiny metal tools. They were all sharpened and cleaned.

They were ready to hurt.

Number Seven suddenly very desperately wanted to numb haze to come back. “W-what do I do?”

The words seemed to squeeze out of her throat on her own accord. Her face was still pale, but the duty that she carried seemed to keep her standing.

Reginald Hargreeves’ eyes flashed, and he stepped forward, backhanding the sleeping man in the chair.

The man woke up with a gasp, his eyes wild.

The man and Number Seven locked eyes, and the man ripped his eyes away. He seemed to see the table full of interrogation tools, and his face changed several times.

Number Seven didn’t know what she should do. There was a heavy dread that sunk over her, and she felt as if she was underwater.

Could she really do this?

“What the fuck-?” The man bared his teeth towards Dad. “What do you think you’re doing, allowing such a small child into-”

Dad didn’t let the man continue, backhanding him across the face again. The fire in the man’s eyes didn’t diminish one bit, but he did start to scream when Dad worked on him.

Number Seven wanted to cover her ears and eyes, but Dad caught her by the arm and looked at her.

“Do you want your siblings to die?”

Number Seven trembled, and she kept her hands at her sides even though she felt as if she was drowning. There were tears in her eyes, and she tried to keep herself calm.

Strangely, it worked when she repeated to herself like a mantra that this man had to be hurt so that her siblings wouldn’t be the ones hurt.

Nearing the end, Dad handed her a sharp scalpel.

She looked at it.

The scalpel was bloodied, but its blade was as sharp as ever.

Trembling fingers reached out and took the scalpel from Dad’s hands – hands that were just as bloody.

It shouldn’t have comforted her that Dad could do it too… but it did.

Number Seven stepped forward and steadied herself. She looked into the man’s glassy eyes, then looked away.

“Where should you cut in order to exert maximum pain without killing him?” came Dad’s voice from behind.

Quietly, the mantra in her head sounded again, Number Seven looked away from the man.

Slowly, the scalpel in her hand was raised…

-

Days turned into months, and months turned into years. Her strange – or well, stranger – behaviour had obviously been noted by her siblings.

At first, they were all concerned, but then as time went by without them finding any answers to their problems, it seemed as if most of them wrote it off as part of Seven’s change.

The only one whom she felt normal around was Five, who didn’t seem to take her changes to heart.

To the rest, she appeared more confident and had a quieter demeanour, which was all. She no longer ducked her head when she spoke, but neither did she speak her mind out.

It was strange and disconcerting, but she was still Number Seven.

She liked to read, liked to listen, and she always had a nice word for them if they ever came around.

She still hung out with Five the most, listening to him ramble on about what he’d learnt recently and how to apply it to his jumps.

Soon, the fact that Seven was acting strangely wasn’t so strange at all.

Now, Seven felt as if she was closer to her siblings than she had ever been. Even Dad’s endless methods of training her for something else seemed a little lighter when she relied on the presence of her siblings.

Sometimes, Seven wondered if they knew… but they couldn’t possibly… right?

None of them even knew that she had powers. Not even Five, who was arguably her favourite.

Every time, she was the only one who stayed behind while her siblings went out on a mission.

It made her skin itch with anxiety.

If she could just be in there, she could help them. She could keep them safe.

But Dad didn’t let her.

He said that she had a duty – she had to kill whoever was outside to keep them safe. They didn’t have a lookout against snipers, he said.

She didn’t understand _why_ she had to keep her powers a secret, or why her being ordinary would keep them safe.

He said it was because that way, less people would think she was a threat, would think that she was just a normal girl.

Like that, she would be able to take out all their enemies in the dark.

The way he said it made her believe in it, but there was still a small part of her that screamed it was wrong.

Number Seven drowned out those words with all her might. Because if she didn’t believe, then she would never be able to believe in it ever again.

And some part of her knew that Dad would never lift a hand if he saw a sniper outside the building whenever a mission went on.

He would just say that their training should allow them to defend against snipers.

Part of Number Seven screamed at him, but the greater part of her seemed content to ignore it. She was here, wasn’t she?

So, Number Seven scaled walls, climbed gates, broke people, _killed people_ , all in the name of keeping her siblings safe.

Some days, it was the only thing that kept her going.

Dad’s demands were harsh, but she bore it in silence, pushing herself even harder.

Soon, nothing phased Number Seven anymore. She sunk into a state of total calm whenever she went on ‘her own missions’ as Dad liked to call it.

Number Seven’s duties no longer only extend to keeping her siblings safe when they went on a mission. Number Seven found herself going on solo missions for Dad without knowing what she was doing it for. She found herself growing number to it all. Repetition after repetition, and she lost sight of herself.

Sometimes, she even forgot that she started it all to keep her siblings safe.

It felt like she was slipping under a persona whenever she carried out those missions.

Like it wasn’t herself.

But of course, Dad was always quick to remind her about the stakes at hand.

Number Seven slowly grew accustomed to taking lives. It was both harder and easier than she thought.

If she allowed the numbness to consume her, she could use her powers as well as her skills without any difficulty.

On the other hand, if she allowed herself to think about it, she couldn’t sleep at night.

Nowadays, the only time she wasn’t numb was when she was with her siblings.

If they wanted her around, that was.

Everything had been going fine. Her siblings were safe, Five didn’t seem to be able to catch on despite spending more time with her.

Seven was relieved.

Even if she was mostly numb now, she didn’t like thinking about them knowing what she was doing behind their backs.

She didn’t go on missions like they did, and neither did she seem to have the same sort of justice-oriented mentality either.

She… didn’t know what was wrong with her. But she hid it well.

Instead of withdrawing from her siblings, it made her more entrenched inside.

And yet, she was chomping at the bit – there were so many more ways that she could help her siblings.

She could see that they were suffering. Yet, she was unable to help because of how closely monitored she was by Dad.

The first time she tried to help, she realized… she made it worse.

Now, she closed her eyes every night, trying to drown out the sounds of cries.

Sometimes, she lay in bed, consumed by nothingness, and she doubted herself.

Was she… doing the right thing?

Why was she still listening to Dad despite everything?

Why…

There was something cold blocking her throat, but her sleepless nights never seemed to affect her productivity at all.

The days of killing and extracting information seemed to blend together endlessly.

That was…

Until she fucked up.

**Author's Note:**

> Do tell me how you liked it and whether or not I should continue haha :)


End file.
